request for subtag for Elfdalian

[Arthur Reutenauer]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 05:18:49PM +0100, Mats Blakstad wrote:
> I asked RA about the the 50 books, I got this answer:
> 
>> Not all languages that have codes have 50 written works. However, the
>> reviewers felt that this case, with strong objections from the Swedish
>> government, should show that there would be serious separate language
>> development, apart from that of Swedish. The number 50 is one used by part
>> 2 of the standard as a minimum to create a new language, so that is why it
>> was chosen.

  But have they actually requested 50 documents in Elfdalian in support
of the application?  I can't see that anywhere in the rejection
comments, and in fact the second paragraph seems to imply the contrary
(in the sentence starting "Beyond the Part 2 subset").  If they've done
that it is indeed unfair (and even more so to not state it clearly).

>>   They must mean that Standard Swedish is a Dachsprache of Elfdalian
>> ([de] Dach: roof), it's a sociolinguistic concept.  I don't think that's
>> particularly controversial; whether it warrants rejecting the
>> application for a primary language code is another matter, of course.
>
> It is not controversial to say that Elfdalian is not a Dachsprache, but to
> say that Elfdalian is not a language because it is not a Dachsprache is
> harder to swallow...

  I agree, that's more or less what I said.

>                      and that we need to ask Sweden for permission to
> recognize it for what it really is; that's an ethnic argument and not
> relevant for ISO 639 which represent codes for languages.

  I don't think ethnicity has anything to do with it (are there any
claims that people in Älvdalen are different ethnically than the rest of
Dalecarlia or Sweden?).  It's just political.

	Best,

		Arthur